For Von Balthasar, "Beauty is love made visible".
Calvin spoke of the created order as "The theatre of God's glory."
Aquinas, "Art is the promise of happiness, and the splendour of truth."
This summer, sometimes unintentionally, or as experiments that surprisingly worked, I have taken photos which have their own persuasiveness in the argument about whether there is a natural theology, a theology of nature in which the beauty and goodness and truth of God is glimpsed. Appreciation and interpretation of images that move us will always be inescapably subjective. Not all will see or agree with or even understand what it is that moves, and attracts, and opens us up to that which is beyond mere conceptualisation but which invades our complacency with an unexpected excitement, with moments of recognition that can change the way we see the world, if we pay attention to them. For in them is the promise of happiness and the splendour of the truth that lies at the heart of all that is.
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